<p>Another perspective-
Many years ago I graduated from a small elite prep school. From my graduating class of just over 80 students, the editor of the school paper is now a professional journalist at a major newspaper, the guy who had the lead in the school play is a highly successful movie & TV actor, the woman who won the history prize was recently nominated for the Pulitzer prize. Literally. Others are doctors, judges, and heads of Fortune 500 companies. The great thing about this is that these are your classmates-bright accomplished people who have interesting ideas and are going places. The hard thing is also that these are your classmates. It’s impossible for the moderately bright accomplished kid to feel in any way special in this environment. MNS finalist? Big deal. So was a quarter of your class. Competitive skier? The kid sitting next to you was in the junior olympics. It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized I was smart and finally took on some leadership roles.</p>